Best Fake Fiance (Loveless Brothers 2)

I’m tempted. He’s definitely kidding, but I also think that if I said yes, he’d take me up on it.

“I’d live,” he teases. “Come on, there’s a bible study group in the back. Let’s scandalize them.”

We don’t. Instead, ten minutes later he leaves to go get Rusty, and I head back home.Chapter ThirtyDanielI knock again, then wait.

And wait. I lean back against the railing of her balcony. Her porch light is on, even though it’s still bright outside. She probably forgot to turn it off this morning.

I raise my fist and knock again, a third time, as loud as I can, just for the hell of it. There’s nothing inside. No footsteps, no sounds of her frantically throwing books into piles, shouting sorry I was in the shower, I’m coming, just dead silence.

Something in my chest squeezes unpleasantly, and I’ve got the distinct feeling that I don’t get to see Charlie today. I know where her spare key is, but before I go get it, I call her.

It rings three, four times.

Maybe she’s in the shower and lost track of time.

Maybe she’s running late, coming home from work, maybe she ran an errand and got stuck somewhere….

Maybe even though I thought we made up, she’s still pissed, and this is how she’s telling me, by just letting me knock and knock and not answering the door.

Not Charlie’s style. At least, I don’t think so, but we’ve never gotten into a fight like that before. Not as a couple.

“Hey, what’s up?” she asks.

“I’m at your place,” I say.

I don’t say, It’s Thursday, I haven’t seen you alone in nearly a week and I’m crawling up the goddamn walls.

“My place?” Charlie echoes.

I’m still staring at her door, the bad feeling in my chest expanding.

“Rusty’s got piano right now?” I say. “Like she does every Thursday?”

“Today’s Wednesday,” Charlie says.

There’s a pause. I say nothing, because it’s not Wednesday, it’s Thursday.

“Shit,” she says, and then voice gets distant, probably because she’s checking her phone to see if I’m right. “I could have sworn…”

I quietly resign myself to jerking off in the shower tonight. Again.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “Shit. Fuck. I’m at the workshop, I’m finishing that table I told you about that had all the superheroes glued on and I totally just…”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, even as the disappointment coalesces in my chest, forms a ball of something viscous and unpleasant.

“I really thought today was Wednesday,” she says.

Of course she did. My irritation, my impatience both flare at Charlie. Of course she has no idea what day today is, because today’s the day I was too busy at work to text her about tonight. Of course she forgets something if I’m not constantly reminding her about it.

That’s not the worst part.

The worst part is the small, nagging voice in the back of my head saying she wasn’t excited enough to remember? You didn’t think about anything else all day.

“I’m so sorry,” she says again, and now she sounds awful and I feel bad. “We were super busy at work all day, and I just… I don’t know, sometimes I get the day wrong. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I say, and already I’m wishing I hadn’t made Rusty cancel her sleepover this weekend. When I grounded her, I didn’t give a single thought to how it would affect my plans.

Parenting blows sometimes.

“Tomorrow,” she says. “Which is Friday. I’ll take you out.”

“Rusty doesn’t—”

“You just chill, I’ll take care of everything,” she says.

I pause, still staring at her front door, hoping that her idea of taking care of everything isn’t leaving Rusty home alone, watching cartoons.

Of course it’s not. Charlie’s not stupid, she’s just a space cadet, and even though right now I’m annoyed and tired and holy hell am I frustrated, I know that.

“Tomorrow meaning Friday,” I say, just to double-check.

“Right,” she says. “Friday. The day after today, which is Thursday. I’ll pick you up at… I dunno, six?”

“If you’re not there I’m calling the cops,” I tease, and Charlie snorts.

“Accidentally leaving you horny isn’t a crime,” she says, laughing.

“It should be.”

“Thank God it’s not,” she says. “Can you imagine the fuckboys at the police station, mad about some girl they got coffee with?”

“All right, I see your point,” I concede, finally heading down her back stairs. “Six.”

“Six,” she says.A few hours later, Charlie texts me.

Charlie: Is Rusty in bed?

Me: Yeah, why?I’m in the kitchen, spreading peanut butter onto sandwich bread, packing Rusty’s lunch for tomorrow

I’ve just dolloped strawberry jam on when the next text comes through.

I drop the knife, because it’s a picture.

Of Charlie. Nearly naked, wearing nothing but panties in her bathroom mirror, one hand in her hair and one on her phone. Her nipples are stiff pink peaks. She’s smiling, laughing, and I can practically feel the curve of her waist in my hands, hear the sound she makes as I pull her in, squeezing, wrapping her legs around me.